Kinetic Fit Workout Types Explained

The Kinetic Fit power-training app is a great tool to motivate and direct your training on Kinetic Smart and Smart Control trainers. Over two dozen training plans and hundreds of guided workouts with power and cadence targets are at your disposal with a Smart subscription. You'll also find second screen viewing features for videos on your device as well as streaming from YouTube playlists. The guided, interval workouts are one of the best features for any rider though, with zone-based workouts ranging from active recovery to sprint sessions. Keep reading to learn more about the workout types that are offered and how they'll help you improve as a cyclist.

Active recovery and pedal efficiency drills

Active recovery workouts are meant as an additional recovery aid. The workouts are done at a very easy pace, 50-60% FTP, and often times can include pedal efficiency drills. Pedal efficiency drills work on engaging more muscles effectively throughout the pedal stroke. Doing so gives you a more powerful, and efficient pedal stroke.

Workout examples

Single legged drills

Fast pedal drills

Endurance Efforts

Endurance specific workouts are aimed at 65-75% FTP and typically are best at a comfortable cadence of 80-95 rpm. The goal of these workouts is to maximize cardiovascular stress, or increase endurance, in the most effective way possible. By staying at 65-75% FTP, and endurance workout stresses the aerobic system while allowing for a fast and hasty recovery post workout. Often times these workouts are focused on increasing duration, or time, over a long period of time.

Workout examples

Steady effort at 80-90rpm at 65-75% FTP

Tempo Efforts

Tempo efforts are often times a comfortably, hard pace. These are fun as you are going fast and don’t feel like you are working super hard. These efforts can help build your muscular strength, aerobic endurance, along with helping prepare your body for threshold training. Training in this zone can be effective at preparing you for harder threshold and over threshold efforts, or can be very productive for athletes that spend lots of time racing at this level. A good example of this would be a triathlete training for a HIM, or a mountain biker that training for a 50 or 100 mile race. In addition to this, adding big gear workouts to Tempo efforts can help stress the muscular system, and give your muscles a nice boost in power prior to jumping up to harder efforts.

Threshold Specific Efforts

If there is one thing you want to increase and work on it is this. Working on and improving your threshold is a key to performance for all endurance athletes. Whether you are an Ironman triathlete, a mountain biker, or a Criterium Road Racer, building your threshold is the key to faster speeds all around. However, to make improvements it is not easy. Threshold workouts are when the times get tough. These workouts are done anywhere from 85-110% FTP. This “threshold” is a very important transitional point for endurance athletes. Nail these workouts and you will see faster times, improved fitness all around, and be riding stronger than in the past

VO2 Max Efforts:

The next step up from Threshold efforts are VO2max efforts. These are shorter, higher intensity, and will put you in the hurt locker. But, just as with the Threshold efforts, if you learn to drive through the pain of these intervals you will see faster speeds, and will also gain the ability to push harder and longer over threshold. VO2max efforts are done at 105-140% FTP and higher and are a key component to improvements when training both indoors and outdoors. For these efforts pick a cadence that is most specific to the event(s) you are getting ready for and that also give you your highest power production with the least amount of effort. For mountain bikers, roadies, and triathletes this might vary greatly, so go with what gives you the most power.

Workout examples

Descending Intervals: maximal efforts starting at 2 minutes and descending down as follows: 2 minutes, 1.5 minutes, 1 minute, 30 seconds. Split into multiple sets typically with large rest between each set

2 to 4 minute intervals: 4-6 repetitions of very hard efforts ranging from 105-140% FTP with long rest periods between each set

Nueromuscular (NM) Efforts

NM efforts are very short, very intense efforts ranging from 15 seconds to 2 minutes. All efforts are at 140% FTP or higher. Even though these are short and sweet, the human body still makes adaptations that improve endurance, threshold, and cardiovascular systems. Do these efforts both in and out of the saddle producing as much power as possible to get the best gains. Pure maximal power is the most important aspect to improvement when performing these intervals.